Total pages in book: 57
Estimated words: 55221 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 276(@200wpm)___ 221(@250wpm)___ 184(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 55221 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 276(@200wpm)___ 221(@250wpm)___ 184(@300wpm)
They ignore him and keep trying to get in. Is it safe inside? My gut is full of misgivings, and I don’t go that way. I don’t take the stairs. Instead, I veer around and climb a barricade at the side of the building.
Still moving, I keep sweeping the area around me for … for what? I’m not sure. But nothing here is safe. I don’t know how I know, but I do.
Finally, my steps slow somewhat as the ache in my side makes it hard for me to breathe. The urgency is still there, but I can slow my pace a bit more. Maybe I’m in shock? Is that it? On autopilot from shock, that could be it.
“It’s blocked!” Someone runs past me, her voice shrill. “Go back!”
I turn and follow her, climbing back over the barricade and then heading toward the street that runs beside the building. Maybe it’s clear there. Maybe I can keep going. Escape—that’s the word. That’s what I’m trying to do.
What am I escaping? I still can’t answer that question. Something is horribly wrong. We’re under attack. By whom? The next question that surfaces stops me. My feet finally going still. Where’s Juno? My sister. Where’s my sister? Did I leave her behind?
Though my skin crawls, I force myself to look, to stop and just look. The White House is at the other end of the mall. It’s engulfed in flames, some of the licks of orange and red reaching high into the night. The gunfire is nonstop, and a jet screams overhead, flying low.
“Let’s go!” A man grabs my arm. “We have to run!”
I let him pull me. When he releases my arm, I follow him into the street. There are more people here, all of them fleeing.
“Keep going! They’ve taken the city!” someone yells.
They? They who?
A squad of soldiers emerges here and there, all of them headed back the way I came. “—many bogies. Air support can’t tell friend from foe. We have—” A snippet from a soldier’s radio offers no comfort.
“Help!” A woman cradles her arm and kneels on the sidewalk. “Please!”
People run past.
I slow.
I stop.
“Help me!” she screams.
Though it sets my teeth on edge, an ache growing in my chest, I turn and walk to her.
“Someone cut me.” She looks up at me, her eyes watery in the faint light. “I don’t know how. I-I was running and—”
“Let me see.” I have no light, no supplies, nothing except my instinct to save her.
I swipe up her tattered sleeve and find gashes down the length of her forearm. Blood and some sort of pale crusting ooze along the edges.
“It burns. It burns so bad,” she sobs.
“We need to wash it. We have to clean the wound. I don’t know what—”
Someone yells behind me, the sound guttural and turning watery.
The woman I’m helping screams.
I whirl.
The man who yelled is dangling in the air, impaled on the clawed hand of … of a monster. It looks like a woman. But it also doesn’t. It’s wrong, wrong on a level that I can’t put into words but that I can feel in my bones. It leers at us as the man twitches. Bile rises in my throat. Disbelief tries to destroy my thoughts, to turn me numb. I can’t let it.
“Up!” I drag the woman to her feet and pull her along with me.
The creature just watches, its eyes silvery and semi-reflective like a nocturnal predator.
It drops the dead man and follows us.
“Faster!” I yank on the woman’s good arm. “Come on!”
More people run past us, but the monster ignores them. It’s focused on us.
“I can’t!” the woman wails.
I’m still pulling her when the monster swipes its claws across her throat, warm blood spurting onto my cheek. I scream as she reaches for her neck.
The creature wrenches her away and sinks its fangs into her bloody jugular, then scurries backwards with her, dragging her away from me.
“Run!” Another woman rushes past me.
I do. I turn and run, my body in agreement, as if sighing in relief as my feet take me in the ‘right’ direction once again. Screams rise all around me.
The gunfire has stopped.
I run.
The earth rocks beneath my feet as a deafening explosion hits the Capitol building. The round roof falls in as flames leap up.
I run.
A man to my right is jerked away, taken straight up into the sky by one of the huge bats I saw earlier. But they aren’t bats at all. They’re people. People with wings and fangs.
“Stop!” A bloodied woman limps toward me. “The vampires are waiting. They’re waiting for us.”
My steps slow. My side hurts, and I still can’t catch my breath. The cold air burns my throat. “What?”
Someone runs past me. Then another person.
“I said the vampires are waiting!” The woman yells. “We’re hemmed in.” She sits heavily on the curb. “There’s no way out.”